Life: The Eternal Pursuit of Meaning and Happiness

The first time I watched Eat Pray Love, I was perhaps too young to understand. I remember that I was not very impressed by the film. I thought it was just about a privileged woman from New York not being able to find happiness when everything that went around her was fine. She had a beautiful place in New York, married for eight years but still managed to feel unhappy. I did not get her, at all.

I watched it the second time last night. Still not very impressed by the film and how it was directed and how the script was written and how the scenes were edited and laid down. But this time, I understood the character better. It was most likely because now I’m a little older and have gone through, let’s say, some events in my life that have given me a better understanding of what she went through.

Was it depression? Was it a midlife crisis? She was feeling nothing and needed to find meaning in her life, needed to find what she wanted in life. She decided to take a sabatical from New York and flew to Italy, India and Indonesia — a year out of the Big Apple. Did she find what she was looking for? Did she find happiness? It was still unclear when the film ended. I have not read the book so am not sure either if she in the end finds “happiness” when the book ends either. But whatever the ending is, I figure that life, at least mine, is about discovering little happiness everyday. We will stumble upon little sadness everyday too. Little sadness, big sadness, little happiness, big happiness, and little sadness, happiness, big sadness, big happiness, big happiness, little happiness, big happiness and little sadness and happiness and the so the cycle of life goes . . .

Film imitating life imitating film. It’s funny how sometimes, in some inexplicable way, we seem to watch films we relate to at a certain stage of our lives. You can’t help but think and self reflect as the credits scroll up on the big screen. Some films perhaps make us feel worst, but some make us a little bit more optimistic.